Monstrous!

When I said 'tomorrow', I meant 'in due time'.

Anyway, CHUD just finished their five week extravaganza "The Forgotten Monsters of Filmland", which was quite fun. As I've laboriously detailed my love with monsters before, and so reading it was a fun time, even though I knew only a portion of the monsters listed (40%, to be exact). But hey, that's part of the fun, isn't it? It's like I'm reading those 30-year-old books in my grade school library again.

Anyway, for extra fun, I'll list ten more forgotten monsters. Let's see how many you've heard of.


Giant Fucking Mantis from Blue Monkey

I thought I should start with something a little familiar. People who know me well know that Blue Monkey is what I like to consider MY B-horror movie, if only because it was only until recently that I knew anyone was also willing to talk about it. I've written in detail about the film before, so just to let you know, it blows and blows hard. The monster in the movie is a big bug that evolved from a large parasitic organism that looked like bird crap that was removed from some jerk's neck and was fed a random blue liquid by some overly-precocious urchins. The only thing it really did during the movie was fill a room with bug ick and then decapitate a guy. Oh yeah, and come back to life before the credits rolled.
Aside from the fact that the movie itself is obscure, the fact that it's called Blue Monkey (which, as far as I can tell, is only so because one of the precocious kids makes a off-hand remark featuring 'blue monkey' at one point in the film) works against the BFM's favour as well. The last thing you expect to find in a movie called Blue Monkey is a big fucking mantis.


Titanosaurus from Terror of MechaGodzilla

Although Titanosaurus doesn't reach the level of 'special ed kaiju' like the CHUD-listed Baragon, he still gets no love because he's a goofy-looking bastard who's forced to play second fiddle to MechaGodzilla. Albeit, if you're going to end up being the sidekick to another of the G-Man's enemies, Mecha-G-Man would probably be the best choice (other good choice: Gigan and King Ghidora, although the latter needs as much help as I need loose leaf paper [read: not very much], but he never really gets a chance to define himself, and ends up dying an inglorious death after being knocked out of most of the fight by humans (you know you don't have to look forward to much in life when you are incapacitated by humans in a Godzilla movie.)


THE Robot from The Phantom Creeps

Bela Lugosi is the man. In the the 1939 serial The Phantom Creeps, he repeatedly tries to take over the world using his magic meteorite...and his large robot. The awesome thing about the robot is that they made it with that sort of 'Fu-Manchu-got-up-early-in-the-morning-and-hasn't-had-his-Folgers-yet' look on his face. I mean, it's not enough you travel around with an evil robot with you, but then you make it look like it's permanently grumpy. As I said, Bela Lugosi is the man.


Dark Overlord of the Universe from Howard the Duck

Howard the Duck is a pretty dire movie, but I do remember this beast scaring the ever-loving piss out of me when I was a kid. The Dark Lord yadda yadda spent most of the movie inside Dean Rooney, making him talk like he swallowed a whole potato and making redneck diners go nuts. By the time the real thing shows itself, its a horrendous crustacean beast...and even worse, there's more than one. Also, with a name like "Dark Overlord of the Universe", you can tell he's not the most modest intergalactic helldemon around.

The Mirror Monster from Conan the Destroyer

The main reason people don't remember this monster is because Conan the Destroyer is not a very good sequel to Conan the Barbarian. But, if people could overlook that fact, they would be able to find this blue-scaled-cape-wearing badass. He kicks Arnie's ass all over the place until the future-governor-of-California figures out that smashing the mirrors in the room he is currently in hurts it. So, he goes out like the world's weakest Legend of Zelda boss, but he still does more in his short time than both the evil wizard Thoth-Amon and the rhino-horned demon from the end of the movie, so there.


Cactus from Bagi, The Monster of Mighty Nature

I stumbled upon Bagi by accident, really. It's an animated movie directed by Astroboy creator Osamu Tezuka, who's so awesome he wore a beret all the time. The titular Monster of Mighty Nature was a purple cat/human/mutant thing, who spends the first half of the movie wearing female undergarments, because she thinks she's people, and then the second half completely feral. However, the monster I found most entertaining was the so-called Cactus, which appears when Bagi and the male hero are on a plane.
Apparently, and I don't really know if there was an explanation given for this, Cacti are a collection of green stretchy hands and tentacles. And they are alive. Huh. Anyway, the Cactus breaks out of its box in the cargo hold of the plane and proceeds to track down Bagi, also in the cargo hold, even though it doesn't have eyes, and try to do unpleasant things before male hero comes in a bludgeons it into submission. Again, I don't know if there was any explanation given for why it was there, why it was what it was, or...really, anything. If I ever figure it out, I'll let you know.


Saucer Men from Earth vs. The Flying Saucers

See, not all aliens are just out there to invade Earth without provocation. These poor Mandroid-looking homies were just passing by, and then WE started shooting at them. Why the hell wouldn't they fight back? And then we go figuring out their weakness and making them all die. So they're somehow halfway between Klaatu and Martians, but they'll always have a special place in my heart.

Frogs from Frogs

Long before Al Gore was telling us nature was pissed, there was this movie. About frogs, if you haven't figured it out yet. Although, really, the frogs themselves do very little, instead telepathically(!) telling the other, much more menacing animals to start running amok while some crotchety old tycoon, who loves the pollution BTW, has his birthday party. The frogs may not be the killers for most of the movie, but they do get to frog dance over the old bastard's corpse at the end, and I can't take that away from them.


Dianoga from Star Wars

Unlike Lak Sivrak, who made it on CHUD's list, the Dianoga has never been removed from the original film. However, its appearance is rarely acknowledged by the people at large, mainly because it really had nothing to do with anything. It was just a monster, possibly just an eye stalk and a tentacle, who lived in the Death Star's trash compactor for some reason.
For the longest time, I was somewhat bothered by the mystery of how it got into the Death Star's trash compactor. Not even my friend's Star Wars encyclopedia had an answer. Thankfully, I found the answer while looking for the above picture: they like to stow away in people's trash compactors. There you have it.

Dan Aykroyd from Twilight Zone: The Movie

Even if you can look past the controversy of the film's making, the only monsters you'll remember is the thing on the wing of the plane. But really, the thing that sorta freaked me out the most was Dan Aykroyd's prologue and epilogue character, who likes turning into a horrible demon to impress people, I guess. It was just unexpected, and now the words "you wanna see something REALLY scary?" have been immortalized within my psyche.